Canadiens’ penalty kill fails again in Florida, leaves no margin for error

SUNRISE, Fla. — There was Joel Armia, sitting in the penalty box with his Montreal Canadiens scrambling to make his misdeed insignificant, helplessly hoping a tie wouldn’t turn into a deficit they would have little time to erase in the third period.

And then he took that all-too-familiar skate of shame back to the bench 52 seconds later. 

Armia took a penalty late in the third period of Thursday’s loss to the Carolina Hurricanes, while the Canadiens were trailing by a goal and trying desperately to tie things up. But this one on Saturday against the Florida Panthers had to feel even worse.

It was two minutes for roughing Oliver Ekman-Larsson; a brainless foul written up in the game’s official log as “removing opp helmet,” taken nearly 200 feet from Montreal’s net, and Eetu Luostarinen made sure Armia would be in the box for less time than that.

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Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis said it was fair to call his penalty the turning point of the game. The score was 1-1 before it happened, and Luostarinen made it 2-1 before the Panthers added two more goals in the final five minutes to secure a 4-1 win.

“You can’t take an offensive-zone penalty in a 1-1 game late in the third against a team like that,” St. Louis added, and there’s no denying that. 

But the Canadiens look like a team that can’t afford to take a penalty at any point of any game, against any opponent. They took three against the Panthers, who came into this one with the 20^th-ranked power play in the NHL, and they allowed two goals.

We’re not exactly talking about the Globetrotters here, but the Canadiens made the Panthers look like them on their way from 29^th down to 31^st on the penalty kill. 

It’s a mess, and it has been for the majority of the season — putting down a welcome mat at the defensive blue line, passively allowing teams to set themselves up in their zone thereafter, failing to make the right reads, to fill lanes, to cover players, to block shots, to clear pucks and to find any type of cohesion.

As captain Nick Suzuki put it, “It’s been killing us lately, and we’ve got to really clean that up.”

Get the Canadiens the world’s biggest broom for that job.

Hey, this game made it clear the penalty kill isn’t the only thing they need to work on. It took them nearly 36 minutes to get to 10 shots and, up until that point, they struggled just as much to connect consecutive passes — and this was against a Florida team that played a hard-fought game against the New York Rangers Friday while the Canadiens were free to stroll the beaches of Fort Lauderdale.

“I liked our first. We didn’t give up much,” St. Louis said. “But in the second we had trouble executing defensively and recovering pucks. It made us spend a lot more time in our zone. It’s a team that doesn’t give you a lot of space, they reload a lot. We dumped the puck to go forecheck, but we had to change. It’s hard to be on top of your opponent with a one-man forecheck.”

All that is true, but it’s also impossible to beat your opponent with a penalty kill that can’t kill.

The Panthers would’ve gone three-for-three had it not been for an offside challenge that successfully overturned a Carter Verhaeghe goal. 

When you watched them attack the Canadiens on that specific play, it looked so unbelievably easy for them to expose all their weaknesses.

“I don’t think it’s one thing,” said St. Louis.

It looks like everything.

“It’s the four guys,” St. Louis added. “If you have one guy that has a missed assignment, it’s usually an opportunity. So, we’re going to keep teaching.”

The learning has to sink in quickly. 

“It’s knowing your opponent, first off,” said goaltender Jake Allen. “Obviously, we change opponents every night, but it’s pre-scouted. [The key is] predictability, for me, from our P.K. units. Predictable to each other, predictable knowing which way one guy’s going to go…Once you get that in sync with your team, that’s when you get guys playing the same P.K. together all the time, playing on the same units. They read off each other, they know each other’s games. I’ve played behind a couple of really good penalty kills in St. Louis and the biggest thing, for me, going back to those days as the guy behind it all watching it unfold, is predictability. Obviously, we’ve got to go back to the drawing board and get a little more predictable.”

And the Canadiens have to avoid the needless penalties.

Nick Suzuki’s hold in the second period wasn’t necessary at the end of a long shift, and it led to Luostarinen’s first goal. 

Later on, Jordan Harris played a puck seconds after Kaiden Guhle had already replaced him on the ice, leaving the Canadiens with too many men.

And then there was what Armia did.

He’s 30 years old, this is his ninth season in the NHL, and two ill-timed penalties over the last two games are two of many unforgivable ones he’s taken over the last few years with the Canadiens.

How will St. Louis deal with it, as the Canadiens are only carrying 12 forwards for their remaining game of this road trip in Tampa Bay Sunday?

“Conversation,” he said. “It’s gotta be corrected. It can’t happen. Ice time? There’s many ways to address that, but it’s gotta be addressed.”

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